Articles

When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 people, those people were murdered by imperial Japan. Likewise, when Israel bombs a Hezbollah-infested village in Lebanon, killing 56 people, those people are murdered by Hezbollah. In circumstances such as these, there is a difference between the…

In "Hezbollah lets Iran buy time for nukes," Arizona State University professor Orde Kittrie provides an overview of Iran's nuclear program, recounting the regime's goals and discussing the "lucky break" it got toward achieving those goals when Hezbollah recently attacked Israel from Lebanon. The big winner thus far in the…

If you want a good laugh—at the expense of a bad book—check out the work of Brendan Powell Smith at www.thebricktestament.com. Smith explains the project and its beginnings in the introduction to his first book, The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis: There I was enjoying a leisurely…

Here are two welcome reports from Medical News Today: Blood Test Predicts Detects Lung Cancer Years Before CT Scan 16 Jul 2006 A new blood test is able to correctly predict non-small-cell lung cancer in patients years before any CT scan can detect it, say researchers from the University of…

If you are an Objectivist blogger or writer, here is a good opportunity to write for a college audience. Dear Objectivist blogger and Ayn Rand fan, The Undercurrent, a national Objectivist campus publication, is now accepting submissions for its back-to-school issue, due to hit the presses in the first week…

Our primary target after 9-11 should not have been the Taliban in Afghanistan; it should have been the regime in Iran. But if we were going to pursue the Taliban, we certainly should have eliminated these vile creatures swiftly and permanently. In order to have done so, however, our military…

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that the rights of homosexuals can be violated by majority vote. This Reuters piece reports that a popular vote on the issue of gay marriage could occur in 2008. Such a vote would place the rights of Massachusetts homosexuals at the mercy of…

Diana West has written a fiery op-ed that, on its face, seems to provide a well-needed antidote to the moral platitudes that are preventing America from ridding the world of savage brutes ("Deluded America," Washington Times, June 23, 2006). Certainly the defenders of America will be energized to read: If…

Here is another good piece by Diana West, in which she correctly notes that If we still valued our own men more than the enemy's and the "civilians" he hides among—and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq—our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful.…

More excellent news about stem cell research, this time from John's Hopkins University: Stem cells taken from mouse embryos have helped paralyzed rats move again, U.S. researchers said on Monday. The study was the best evidence so far that controversial embryonic stem cells might be used to treat people with…

In an article titled "It's an Islamic jihad, stupid," Diana West wonders why the Bush administration "keep[s] things vague and indirect," pursuing a "war on terror" rather than a war on "Islamic jihadists." Ms. West notes that without understanding the religious nature of jihad (holy war), along with its sister…

Our policy in Somalia is but a small part of the absurdly-named "War on Terror"; however, a June 14th New York Times article entitled "U.S. Calls Hasty Meeting to Seek Somalia Solution" provides a good example of the tragic flaw that pervades all of our efforts in the battle against…

The widespread acceptance of altruism (the fallacious notion that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others) causes continuous human suffering and death. Yet another example of this fact is illustrated in a recent article by Dr. Sally Satel (a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute). Because of the widespread…

Many people in the West maintain that the Koran is opposed to terrorism: the initiation of violence against unarmed civilians to incite terror for a political cause. To many westerners, Bin Laden, et al are motivated by a totalitarian political ideology, not by Islam, and are "hijackers" of Islam, not…

A story from an Arabic news site reports an interesting development in Saudi Arabia: female to male sex-change operations: Reports reveal that in 2005, there were no less than five cases of women who underwent surgery to become men in the Kingdom, according to Al Watan…. Some Saudi officials have…